RICHMOND
A federal lawsuit over late-arriving absentee ballots from soldiers and citizens will proceed without the John McCain presidential campaign, which initiated it.
The Department of Justice instead will become the plaintiff in the suit against state election officials that could determine whether those ballots will be counted, or set a precedent for future elections.
"We have succeeded in starting the fight and we're happy to pass the flag" to the U.S. attorney general, said William Hurd, a McCain campaign attorney, after Monday's hearing.
Lawyers for the Republican presidential ticket filed the suit on Nov. 3, saying that election officials in several Virginia localities mailed the ballots too late for overseas recipients to receive and return them by Election Day.
State law requires absentee ballots to be returned by the date of the election for the votes to count. The initial lawsuit sought a 10-day extension of that deadline.
During a Nov. 4 hearing, U.S. District Judge Richard Williams ordered tardy ballots be preserved, though he still has not ruled on their fate.
As of Friday, Virginia localities reported receiving 4,750 late absentee ballots, Hurd said.
That appears to be too few ballots to change the outcome of any Nov. 4 contests in Virginia.
But Department of Justice attorney Alberto Ruisanchez contends that the lawsuit has ramifications "not only for this election, but for future elections."
The primary claim in the lawsuit is that some local election officials - including those in Chesapeake, Suffolk and Virginia Beach - mailed ballots fewer than 45 days prior to election.
State law requires electoral boards to have printed ballots available that far in advance of a November general election. There is no such federal requirement.
Julian Walker, (804) 697-1564, julian.walker@pilotonline.com
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The bill which caused this mess was drafted by a republican (Bolling, I believe -- it was cited in a previous article). The republican strategy to keep the vote count down in VA was announced at a GOP convention in 2006 I believe. The pilot reported on that as well. I want to say that the GOP did not want to see a large turnout in Northern VA especially. On a national scale, the GOP has done quite a bit to keep voter turnout down (I'm not alleging illegal activity however -- more like injunctions and whatnot). As I stated before, every vote should count -- dem, rep, ind, whatever. As an aside, the VA Beach CC should not be allowed to change election day in an effort to redude the number of voters (since that is essentially what they want to do).
Because
Why waste time and money on this? MCcain lost by such a huge margin.
Because it's an import issue with the federal government handling ballots for the military in a way that is violating some state rules. Since there's 50 sets of rules they have to follow, it's easy for one to get missed.
Why?
Why waste time and money on this? MCcain lost by such a huge margin.
What?
this was a republican bill that is part of a general republican strategy.
What are you talking about?
They can only blame themselves...
this was a republican bill that is part of a general republican strategy. It's a shame that absentee ballots have to suffer. It's sad. Every vote, democrat, republic, independent, whatever should be counted....
Good thing
This is a good thing because the issue is really irrelevant to this election. It is important to state and federal interaction in future elections. If the federal government messes up or the rules for the federal issued ballots are different, the states should still be able to count them even if their own rules say no. A court ruling would give the states more flexibility.
Opening a Pandora's Box
Oh Oh, watch out! I am just waiting for the conspiracy theories to start again! One side will blame the other, and the whole thing will flare up big time! Speculations, rumors, claims, false information will spread like wild fire. As the Billy Joel song states: "We didn't start the fire".